Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

In Greenland, another major glacier comes undone – ‘The changes are staggering and are now affecting the four corners of Greenland’

12 November 2015 (NASA) – It’s big. It’s cold. And it’s melting into the world’s ocean. It’s Zachariae Isstrom, the latest in a string of Greenland glaciers to undergo rapid change in our warming world. A new NASA-funded study published today in the journal Science finds that Zachariae Isstrom broke loose from a glaciologically stable […]

Economist: ‘More pronounced global warming is probably a net negative’

By Roger Harrabin16 November 2015 (BBC News) – Human societies will soon start to experience adverse effects from manmade climate change, a prominent economist has warned. Prof Richard Tol predicts the downsides of warming will outweigh the advantages with a global warming of 1.1C – which has nearly been reached already. Prof Tol is regarded […]

U.S. still losing the war on obesity – especially women

By Ed Cara14 November 2015 (Medical Daily) – Americans are still getting fatter, a new CDC report finds. The battle of the bulge is still a losing one, according to a new report released this November by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics […]

Indonesia’s forest fires take toll on wildlife, big and small – ‘This double-punch or triple-punch of drought, fire, and smoke is likely to be much more damaging to the biome than any one of these elements alone’

By Joe Cochrane30 October 2015 JAKARTA (The New York Times) – A disoriented, pregnant orangutan, her treetop home in Indonesian Borneo reduced to charred wood, is rushed to a rehabilitation centre by conservationists, who dodged walls of fire and toxic smoke. Veterinarians care for 16 abandoned baby orangutans already living at the centre. The babies […]

Photos gallery: The astonishing situation of Brazil’s worst drought on record

26 October 2015 (weather.com) – Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest has become a shadow of its former self as the worst drought the country has seen in 100 years continues. Low levels of water in the Rio Negro have left boats stranded and isolated homes sitting in the middle of the large deserted landscape, reports Daily Mail. […]

Global climate in context as the world approaches 1°C above pre-industrial for the first time

11 November 2015 (Met Office) – Global annual average surface temperature in 2015 is looking set to reach 1°C above the pre-industrial average (as represented by the 1850-1900 reference period) for the first time, according to the HadCRUT4 dataset produced by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. […]

Greenhouse gas concentrations hit yet another record – ‘We will soon be living with globally averaged CO2 levels above 400 parts per million as a permanent reality’

GENEVA, 9 November 2015 (WMO) – The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached yet another new record high in 2014, continuing a relentless rise which is fuelling climate change and will make the planet more dangerous and inhospitable for future generations. The World Meteorological Organization’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin says that between 1990 and […]

Everything you need to know about the Exxon climate change probe

By Christie Smythe 10 November 2015 (Bloomberg) – For years, energy companies have couched the possible effects of climate change-related regulations in public reports to investors as “uncertain,” “difficult,” or “not possible” to reasonably predict. Now a probe by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is raising questions as to whether the companies knew more […]

Canada is finally ending its war on science – PM Trudeau appoints minister of environment and climate change – ‘Canada is going to be a strong and positive actor on the world stage, including in Paris at COP 21’

By Julia Belluz9 November 2015 (Vox) – Over the past nine years, Canada has been a pretty dreary place for scientists. Under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, the country made headlines for restricting communications by federal scientists, shutting down important research stations, phasing out the role of federal science adviser, and generally ignoring evidence […]

Airpocalypse now: China pollution reaches record levels

By Tom Phillips, with additional reporting by Luna Lin8 November 2015 BEIJING (The Guardian) – Residents of north-eastern China donned gas masks and locked themselves indoors on Sunday after their homes were enveloped by some of the worst levels of smog on record. Levels of PM2.5, a tiny airborne particulate linked to cancer and heart […]

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